John Ferriar

Who was John Ferriar?

John Ferriar, was a Scottish physician and a poet, most noted for his leadership of the Manchester Infirmary, and his studies of the causes of diseases such as typhoid. M.D. Edinburgh, 1781; his essay on Massinger reprinted in Gifford's edition; physician of the Manchester Infirmary, 1789–1815; introduced many sanitary reforms when on the Manchester board of health; published works including Medical Histories and Reflections 1792-5-8, and Illustrations of Sterne 1798. His obituary, published in 1815, read:

Died, on the 4th of February, aged 52, JOHN FERRIAR, M. D. Senior Physician of the Manchester Infirmary. The eminent rank which he held in his profession, not only in that town and its immediate neighbourhood, but through a widely extended district of the surrounding country, was founded on long and general experience of the efficacy of his counsels. He was endowed by nature with an acute and vigorous understanding, which he had matured by a life of diligent study, and of careful and well-digested observation, into a judgment unusually correct and prompt in its decisions.